


Look at the Blood We're Spilling

by kho



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-11 23:53:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7075894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kho/pseuds/kho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Civil War, Tony & Steve... because my heart is so broken.</p><p>“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, Mr. Rogers,” Tony says, darkness edging in. “Isn’t that everything you stand against? Just the mere thought of anyone ever telling you what you can and can’t do. Well. It’s enough to start a war and cripple one of your friends over.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look at the Blood We're Spilling

**Author's Note:**

> This movie made me cry like, three times. No movie's done that to me in a long, long time. If ever. I blame it on the huge arc they've built so beautifully over so many films with so many characters, making me love each and every one of them so fully and completely. I find myself still unable to suss out who was the most wrong and the most right in this film. I just love them all so much.

 

> Look at the shoes you're filling  
>  Look at the blood we're spilling  
>  Look at the world we're killing  
>  The way we've always done before  
>  Look in the doubt we've wallowed  
>  Look at the leaders we've followed  
>  Look at the lies we've swallowed  
>  And I don't want to hear no more
> 
> \- [Civil War](https://youtu.be/E9VhD4SccSE), Guns N Roses

 

* * *

 

 

Tony flips open the phone but says nothing.

“You answered.”

Still he says nothing, but it hurts, God, so bad to hear Steve’s voice.

“Okay, I guess I can accept your breathing as confirmation.”

“Rhodey says hello,” Tony says, voice flippant, light. Something he hasn’t felt in months. Something he may not ever feel again. Ever.

“Don’t,” Steve says. “Tony, don’t. You can’t blame that on me.”

“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, Mr. Rogers,” Tony says, darkness edging in. “Isn’t that everything you stand against? Just the mere thought of anyone ever telling you what you can and can’t do. Well. It’s enough to start a war and cripple one of your friends over.”

“Wow. I didn’t know that would hurt me so much, you calling me Mr. Rogers.”

“And I didn’t know you shoving your shield, the shield _my father built you_ , directly into my heart and cracking it in two would hurt as much as it did.” Tony finds it hard to breathe, tears pricking at his eyes. Like hell will he let Steve hear it, though. “Well. My metaphorical heart. But then again, it was metaphorical hurt too, since I didn’t really feel anything physically. Just the betrayal, that’s all I felt. Nothing serious.”

“And what did I feel, Tony? What did I feel, you standing in line against us. You… you shooting at us, coming at us full force.”

Tony closes his eyes and tries to take deep breaths. Hears the coaching in his head from Pepper. In, one two three. Out, one two three. Pepper. Pepper. He’s lost everything. He’s lost _everyone_. The moment he gave a shit about his life, it fell the fuck apart the harder he tried to hold it together.

“And didn’t you do the same,” Tony asks, but then lets out a breath, because he’s tired. He’s so, so, so very tired. “You wanna call it a draw? I’m a piece of shit. That’s not news, Cap. That’s old hat. Playboy billionaire Tony Stark, never was worth a damn. Not exactly breaking news on CNN.”

“Tony that’s not fair. You are not a piece of shit. And believe it or not, I actually do know that you never intended what happened to happen.”

“It didn’t have to,” Tony stresses, bending over his desk, his hand shaking as he pours another whiskey into the tumbler that hasn’t run dry for weeks on end now. “It didn’t… It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Steve. It was… I was trying to get out ahead of it. I was trying to cut it off at the pass.”

“If you can’t beat them join them? That was your game plan, Tony? I never understood that. You didn’t even discuss it with us before you’d already made up your mind, and we’re just supposed to fall in line.”

“If you can’t beat, join and make the fuckers change _with you_ ,” Tony yells. “Get in at the ground level and work your way up. You think… you honestly think I wouldn’t have made it to the top within the year? You really think the head of the oversight committee wouldn’t have been in my fucking god damned pocket within _months_?”

Steve’s laugh is equal parts a salve to his aching soul and what shatters what’s left of it to bits. “I am so sick and tired of lesser of two evils, Tony. Can’t anyone win honestly anymore?”

“No,” Tony spits out. “Get your head out of your ass Steve, God. Listen, you know I love you’re aw shucks, who me mentality, babe, but come on. This sugar sweet can’t we all just get along and hold hands crap barely worked your first go around this earth, and it don’t work at all now, so grow up.”

“Sometimes I think I’m the most grown up,” Steve says, and Tony rolls his eyes because of course he does. Steve is never wrong, in Steve’s world. Morality is king, and no one knows morals more than Cap.   “You can’t just buy your way out of and in to everything Tony. That doesn’t fix anything, it’s a stopgap and the next guy that comes around with bigger pockets rules next.”

“Then I get a seamstress to make some alterations to my pockets,” Tony grumbles, burying his face in his hands. “Make my pockets never-fucking-ending.”

“And they do the same. And then you do. And they do. Tit for tat.”

Tony bursts out laughing. “I honestly didn’t think you knew that phrase.”

“I’m tired Tony, aren’t you? This hurts, this strain between us. We were friends.”

“I thought so,” Tony says, and is chest seizes on the words. Panic or heartbreak, he can’t quite differentiate anymore. “I really thought we were, Steve.”

“We were. We _are._ ”

“He killed my parents, Steve,” Tony says, whispers really, because all these years. All these years later, after everything he’s been through, everything he’s done, every therapist appointment he’s gone to. Every fucking simulation he’s run, trying to get over this empty aching hole that his parents death left in his soul. It still hurts. So bad. “He killed them to make more of him. He killed… You saw the video, Steve. He killed him like it was nothing but then he killed her. He killed my Mom and he didn’t need to. He didn’t have to. She didn’t… she didn’t do anything, Cap. She didn’t deserve it.”

Tears flow down his face like rain but his voice doesn’t shake at all. When Steve speaks though, his does, and it hurts Tony that much more because he knows Steve’s trying to hold it back too.

“I’m so sorry, Tony. No one deserved it. No one deserved what happened. Don’t forget, Howard was my friend too. There are ways in which…” Steve sighs and Tony’s fists clench to keep himself from reaching through the phone to strangle Steve for what’s about to come. “There are ways in which I am his son as well, Tony. He made me.”

“He made you into the soldier you are, you were already the man,” Tony says, because he knows what’s coming and it makes him furious, but he still knows he’ll never know a better man than Steve Rogers.

“No one deserved this. He didn’t. Your mother didn’t. You didn’t. But Tony. And I’m so sorry, because I know you’re not ready to hear this, you’re not in a _place_ to hear this, but Buck? Bucky didn’t deserve it either.”

“Don’t.” Tony grits his teeth and squeezes his glass tumbler so hard he’s surprised it doesn’t shatter into a million pieces, spilling whiskey and glass all over his desk. “Don’t you dare, Steve. Do not excuse what he did.”

“There is no excusing, Tony, I’m not excusing what happened, but it wasn’t _him_ , don’t you get that?”

“God, just stop.” Tony growls, gritting his teeth harder, hitting a fist into his desk. “Stop this. Stop.”

“It could’ve been me,” Steve says, voice quiet. “You get that right? It could have been me. Bucky… He’s a good man, Tony. He may even be a better man than I am.”

“Not fucking possible.”

“Tony, he… He fought, without the added powers the serum gave me. The bravery he had… He defended me as a scrawny little nothing kid in Brooklyn for no other reason than, than it was just the right thing to do. He… He was brainwashed, by Nazi’s, Tony. He didn’t have a choice, he didn’t choose this, he wasn’t in control. And it could have been me. It could so easily have been me instead. Don’t you see that?”

“Fine,” tony says, wiping the tears from his face, swallowing the last of the whiskey. “Then you can go to hell too.”

“Tony.”

“No, it coulda been you, and it may as well have been for all you’re defending him,” Tony says, in that same voice he pulls out for politicians. That I wouldn’t piss on you to put the fire out tone of voice. He’s full of shit and he knows it, knows Steve knows it too, but he has to. He has to disengage or he’ll just curl up into a ball of pain and anxiety and Peppers not here anymore to… No one’s here anymore. No one. “You and Bucky Barnes can go to hell for all I care.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“The hell I don’t.”

“I know you, Tony. You don’t.”

Tony laughs hollowly. “I swear to God, Steve. I so do.”

“One day you won’t,” Steve says, resigned. “And when that day comes Tony, I’ll be here. I’ll always be here.”

And Tony wishes, so hard it burns, that he didn’t still love Steve with every single fiber of his being.

He hangs up so he won’t say it.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr here under [@lovethesnark](http://lovethesnark.tumblr.com). 
> 
> Fanfiction Website  
> MOST of my fic is not on AO3, though all of my H5O and beyond is as AO3 didn't exist yet and it was too much to archive. It can be found on my website at [LoveTheSnark.com](http://www.lovethesnark.com).


End file.
